I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ways our newsroom can use Twitter. There have been plenty of others before me who have also written quite a lot on the topic, so I’m clearly not the only one out there who’s mulling tweets.
But thinking about Twitter also crashed into thinking about comments on our Web site, and also about what’s going on in newspapers worldwide. The curmudgeonly and the skeptical certainly have a lot to say about Twitter (“who the hell wants to know what I had for breakfast” seems to be a common theme, usually among self-important newspaper columnists). And there’s research that Twitter confuses our morals (which I don’t believe, but after all, mine were ruined by video games.)
I think that what those who are critical of Twitter are forgetting, however, is the value of conversation. Which leads me back to newspapers, and the problems that newspapers are having.
In my first newspaper job after graduation, at the Star-News in Wilmington, N.C., we were using swipe cards to get in and out of “sensitive areas.” For practical purposes, that pretty much meant we restricted access everywhere except the main hallway, which was open to the public during business hours. The building itself didn’t have windows, except in the two hallways that ran the length of the structure, or any other way to see the outdoors. There were several explanations for that — ranging from racist owners in the 1970s to the more plausible fact that the building was in a hurricane zone. The point, though, is that once you entered the building you were pretty much locked down.
Similarly, I remember going to visit a former student at the Rocky Mountain News. After calling up to the newsroom, I went through a metal detector and a security screening and was issued a temporary ID card. When Diego came down to get me, he swiped his security card to give him access to the Rocky’s floors at the Scripps building, and we went on up to the newsroom.
To be fair to the Rocky, it was in the same building as a competitor, so the desire to restrict people who had access to the building from certain floors is understandable. But I couldn’t help thinking how damned hard it would be for an ordinary person to see a reporter or editor, to complain or compliment them on coverage or just get a look at how the news is made. Granted, my newspaper experience growing up was at a very small newspaper in a very small town, but there was something pretty cool about he fact that everyone in town knew who published the newspaper and who to call when they didn’t get a copy. People tend to look at small-town owners as too connected to their communities (which is a blindingly stupid notion when you really think about it), worrying about self-censorship as a result of close businesses and personal ties.
The thing is, I can’t help but think that close business and personal ties are what’s missing from newsrooms today. I don’t exactly know when journalism became about walling yourself off from the rest of the community, but it’s a huge part of what’s killing newspapers now. (Along with corporate owners who overbought and the soft ad market, of course.) If our journalists aren’t part of the community — if they aren’t active in civic life, if they don’t participate in events, if they can’t be bothered to talk to actual people — how can they be credible sources in the community?
Way back when I was in J-school, we were taught that civic engagement wasn’t a good idea. It was okay (mostly) to vote, but not really to serve on boards, and certainly not to do anything where you’d be associated with people that take a public stance on … anything. The idea, of course, is to avoid “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” The goal was to avoid looking like we were biased.
The problem, of course, is that no one accepts any more the idea that journalists aren’t biased. And some of us are starting to argue about the value of objectivity as a goal (I think we confuse it with accuracy and fairness, but that’s another post for another time.) So, given that, why not allow and encourage them to join the conversation?
One thing that we run into at Mizzou is that we’re teaching college students on a college campus. So, naturally, like students everywhere, they use Facebook and Twitter and every other social media tool known to man. So, of course, the response from our editors was initially to be horrified, complain that they were neglecting real news in favor of trivial “what did you have for breakfast” news, and the like. We even had a reporting class discussion last summer about not changing your facebook status in reaction to the news. But lately, that ice has started to thaw a little.
I think part of that is the increased prevalence of our editors on Twitter. They’re starting to see it as a useful conversation tool, somewhere where they learn things as well as just blurting out opinions. And, too, they’re seeing the comment threads our readers build on our site, and how those can somehow turn into surprisingly lively and intelligent conversations. Here’s one in particular that was surprising — not just because the police chief joined in, but for the degree of transparency the writer of the story (a Missourian editor and good friend) showed when he had some problems with his initial story. Here’s another one from this morning where the photo editor responded.
It’s worth pointing out that in each situation, we wound up correcting or clarifying information associated with the story. And that’s a good thing — it means that even when our verification process doesn’t work, we can still make sure we get the correct data out. (And, seriously, who says the process of verification stops at publication?) Our readers are also seeing us respond to issues as they come up, which is always a good thing. And, sometimes, small talk is the point — it can be an end in itself.
Now, clearly, we don’t have this conversation thing totally nailed down. For one thing, we tend to still think of starting conversations with the public. We ask questions that invite a response, rather than jumping into what’s already going on. So we need to make sure we can teach people how to engage in the conversations. For another thing, we don’t have good guidelines on how to negotiate the public/private aspect of using social media for work. I’m not normally fond of having a handbook for everything, but we are dealing with college students who, by definition, have immature judgment at times. So we need to make sure they’re not just tweeting “I’m SOOOOOOO DRUNK” on the same account they’re using for reasoned conversations — it’s gonna turn off sources, bottom line.
This summer, as the editorial director of Vox, I’m going to encourage our students to use our Twitter account and their existing social media to create conversations and to interact with our audience. What are other ways we could involve ourselves in the community conversation?
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